


Inundate

by decembrefolie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hallucinations, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Will is a Mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28418865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decembrefolie/pseuds/decembrefolie
Summary: Will pushes them off the cliff to let fate decide for him. What he didn't account for, was that fate was never kind to him.Or, the story where only Will survives the fall.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Inundate

He came to on the rocky shore. His clothes clung to him with every laboured inhale he took. He was trembling in pain, on the brink of hypothermia yet he felt victorious. He let out a groan as he clutched convulsively at the cold material of Hannibals jumper still in his hand.

 _Hannibal_ , he thought.

It took him a few attempts to finally wedge his eyelids open and blink through the burn of the salt. He tried for a crooked smile despite the gash on his cheek as he turned his head slowly to the side to glance at Hannibal. It barely began to form before he realised he was alone. 

There wasn't a body beyond his outstretched hand. His fingers lost the grip on the fabric momentarily as numb realization crashed into him like waves against the cliff.

Fate wasn't something to seek insight from after all.

Next time he woke up, he was in a considerably better condition. He felt a deep rooted ache somewhere within him but he was too warm from the thin bed sheets and too hazy from the drugs pumping through his veins to entertain it. 

He focused on the sounds beyond his body and heard Jack speaking in a booming whisper to a nurse who was further away. Only when he heard the door close did he open his eyes. Unfortunately, Jack wasn't on the side of the door he expected.

Upon making eye contact Jack gave him a contrite and guilty grimace of a smile. His eyes seemed to roam over Wills battered form with slight trepidation. 

"I should've never doubted you," were the first words uttered into the silence of the room.

Will closed his eyes and decided that he's in hell.

He heard his dry throat audibly click as he swallowed. Neither of them mentioned the glass of water by the table.

"You had all the reasons to," came out more as a croak than the blanketed confession that it was.

He heard Jacks steps echo as he advanced towards him. A hand clasped his uninjured shoulder tightly. Only when he forced himself to relax into the unwanted comfort, did he realise he was cuffed to the hospital bed.

He flexed his fingers as he opened his eyes and moved them just past Jacks shoulder. He didn't want to see. 

"Which side am I on?" he asked more of himself than Jack. He already knew the answer though. There weren't any more sides to pick. Not anymore. 

"The side that saves lives." 

After extensive yet rushed medical, court and psychiatric procedures he was let out. His hands were rid of restraints.

"You're free to go," they said. 

_Where else would I go_ , he wanted to say. 

He didn't want to think about _it_ . Nobody spoke to him about _it_. They knew he could figure it out. 

He willed himself to think about every case that woke him up at night feeling sweat drenched. He daydreamed about the terrifying encephalitis induced hallucinations of the past. He scrutinized his deeply repressed fears, anxieties and desires. He focused on the pull of his healing wounds, on that ache he felt somewhere within him.

He thought of his makeshift family of Molly and Walter. He could go back there, she is kind hearted enough to take him back in. Probably wouldn't even question it deeply. 

He thought of Alana and Margot, and their survival. He thought of Jack, and his burning ambition. He thought of Chilton and Freddie Lounds and everyone who wasn't _him_. 

_The hero we needed_ , proclaimed the newspapers. Why then, did he feel like the perpetrator and a victim at the same time. 

He inhaled the crisp winter air as he stood outside his old house. There were no dogs at his feet begging for his attention. Only the onslaught of memories from what seemed a lifetime ago greeted him. 

_Before you, and after you._

It was in a worse shape than he left it in. The paint peeling, mould infesting the damp terrace, a crack splintering in the window. He could already feel the draught.

He peeked behind himself at the sudden presence he felt.

Chiyoh stood behind him, her grip was relaxed on the rifle which she held against her leather clad thigh. She seemed to be evaluating the house just as he was only seconds before. Only the steely wrath brimming in her eyes betrayed her calm demeanor. He turned away.

"If not for him, you would be dead." 

He gritted his teeth at the uncensored truth of that. His eyes stung as he abruptly felt the water crash into the body that wasn't his. 

"If not for him I wouldn't have been reborn," he flexed his jaw as unbidden memories of the fall played before his eyes. He felt phantom blood pool into his mouth. 

_It's beautiful_. 

"No," was the simple and harsh answer that he got. When she didn't elaborate he turned bodily to her and saw that she was already staring at him. He flicked his eyes away.

"No," she repeated, "If he didn't ask me to let you live, you wouldn't even have reached the hospital." 

The sudden headache that pounded into his skull momentarily made his vision fade into darkness. Even her desire to blow off his head didn't overshadow the loyalty she felt. He wouldn't blame her if it did. Yet, she knew decisively which side she was on and held onto it. 

"How-", he started, "Is he-?" 

The _pity_ on her face quelled the rising irrational hope that he knew better than to indulge in. 

She took a few silent steps towards him and handed him an envelope without another word. He didn't need to look down to know that his name was written on it in that familiar cursive handwriting. 

_You sit in that chair, as you have so many times before. It holds among its molecules the vibrations of all our conversations ever held in its presence._

He clenched his eyes shut and willed his hands not to rumple the envelope. When he finally opened his eyes, Chiyoh was already gone. 

It was a few weeks later that he inevitably found himself back at a crime scene. Price and Zeller milling around, photos being taken with blinding flashes and Jack briefing him on the murder. It was so ordinary he could almost see Beverly striding past him with a coffee in hand. 

There was nothing particular about this murder. Nothing artistic, nothing poetic, nothing layered and flayed and brutally meaningful. It was Jack seeing if he's fit to save lives again. 

The whole process was so mind numbingly dull. 

He would give his left kidney to feel what he felt when he saw the murders of the Chesapeake Ripper for the first time, but without the thin veil of morality. 

If anyone saw his amused smile at the scene, they were smart enough not to mention it. 

He heard a knock on his door a few days later. He shakily placed his whiskey on the table as he rose from his place on the couch. If he glanced at the clock he would've seen it was almost 3am in the morning. 

He wobbled towards the sound and grabbed the handle a bit harder than necessary as he angrily yanked the door open. The snappy remark ready on his tongue was yanked away like a tooth with a string when he saw who it was. His mouth stayed open on a word that wasn’t coming.

Glorious and blood soaked under the moonlight, wearing that same grey jumper he wore at the cliffside. The same grey jumper currently in the evidence room at the FBI. The same grey jumper that was clasped between his fingers as Hannibal was washed away by the ocean. 

His glistening lips twitched in hardly concealed delight as he lifted his chin and extended a full wine glass to him. The other was pressed underneath his bullet wound, slowly filling up.

"We never got to finish." 

If he said anything else Will didn't hear it past the blood pounding in his ears. He slammed the door shut, flicked the lock and slid down to the floor. 

He tried to calm his erratic breaths as he thought of the unopened letter in his drawer. Of course Hannibal wouldn't have let him forget. 

_Can't live with him, can't live without him._

The next day, Will booked a hasty brain scan appointment in the hospital. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a fever, or nastier migraines than usual. He needed to be sure.

When the results came back negative he didn’t know if he should be disappointed or relieved. 

Jack forced him into “weekly psych evals” which really were poorly concealed therapy sessions. 

He was the man who caught the Chesapeake Ripper twice. He was a skilled manipulator, liar. He excelled at it. Why they thought these evaluations would help them gain insight he didn’t know.

He was sitting on the stiff chair in an off-white shell of an office. His gaze lingered on the cheap art adorning the walls. His thoughts just about skirted over the memory of a darker office filled with arrogant trinkets, a wooden ladder leading towards expensive books and comfortable armchairs. He thought of the dark statue of the stag.

He shifted in the chair waiting for the agent to speak.

“How are you dealing with your loss, Will?” the agent asked in a seemingly inattentive tone. She was clearly aware of Wills ingenuity. For the first time since the initial session, he wondered what her name is. He wondered if giving him these therapy sessions was as much punishment to her as to him.

Will exhaled and focused his gaze on a lock of hair that escaped her tie.

“I knew I was going to lose my family when I decided to come back to work on the case of the dragon.”

He could see her tightly pursed lips from his peripheral vision. He saw the tension build up in her shoulders as she was preparing herself to speak. She didn’t possess any of the cold elegance of Bedelia nor the former softness of Alana. Nor the non-judgmental understanding of-

“I don’t mean your family,” she clarified and Will felt submerged, and rocked by waves and the pain splintered through him like a crack in a stone wall. He morphed his face into a look of distaste and hoped that would warrant a subject change. Nobody spoke about _him_ with him.

It didn’t. She waited patiently, content to wait out their session if there was that need. He knew he couldn’t not speak, she would see the crack in him. How wide and penetrable it was. How easily it could crumble under the right sort of pressure.

He worked his jaw as he prepared to answer. 

“I started dealing with that loss when I found out what he was. This question is long overdue.”

The slight feeling of _pity_ that permeated the air made his stomach roil. He regretted not wearing a watch.

“Grief manifests itself in an array of ways,” she stated unhurriedly, “We express it through anger, sadness, acts of violence. Sometimes, in extreme circumstances, reality blends with the feelings of loss and you grieve those people back into temporary existence. By means of drugs, excessive sleep or, in rare cases, hallucinations.”

He doubted that the slight tremor that went through his hand was noticeable enough to count as a tell. She drummed her trimmed fingernails on the edge of the desk between them. She decided.

“Agent Crawford knows you went to the hospital, and he knows you had no physical reasons to go there.”

As he stood in front of his bathroom mirror, he ghosted his hand over the twin bullet scars on his right shoulder, over the mirroring stab wound on his opposite shoulder. He raised his hand as he cupped his own cheek to feel the fresh scar on his cheek, pushed his tongue against it from the inside. He turned his head slightly to search for the ghosts of the incisions Cordwell inflicted upon his face. 

He pushed his hair away to graze over the healed gash on his forehead.

He traced the scar on his abdomen with reverent fingers. His knuckles turned white as he impulsively dug his nails into the flesh. The lightbulb flickered above him, but even without the light he would know exactly what it looked like.

He stared into his own stormy eyes as he realised that _he_ really did leave him with a smile.

He ended up taking in a stray. A shaggy mongrel who he fed once and who rewarded him with immediate loyalty. 

The dog was a formidable companion. Readily accepting of the new rules, he was granted special permission to sleep on the bed since there weren’t any others to fight him for space.

Will watched the slow rise and fall of his companions' smaller body propelled by unobstructed pathways filling up the lungs with air. Guilt coiled in his gut as he easily imagined trading this breath for another.

Breaking into _his_ old house was as easy as it has always been. Except that this time it was empty, dusty, smelled of disuse and dirt. The glow of the outside lamps was the only source of light inside.

When he entered the kitchen, it shouldn’t have surprised him to see _him_ behind the counter flicking nonchalantly through some recipes. If not for the otherworldly stillness of his surroundings he would’ve doubted it’s unreal. The luminous presence shrouded everything else in the room into bleak darkness. 

“Hello Will. It’s been a while.” he greets him with a small smile. He’s dressed in that jumper, his movements betraying the wound that’s still not fully healed beneath his clothes. The hole from the bullet seemed to be experly sewn up.

In lieu of a greeting Will stepped in and extended his hand towards the apparition. When his hand touched the coarse fabric covering the sternum Will released a shaky breath. He was never before in his life so grateful to be so unstable. 

He pressed his palm in harder, willing himself to conjure up the heartbeat that would be underneath. He didn’t find it.

“I know you’re gone. I know you’re not real. I’m not crazy,” he spoke into the space between them.

A cold thumb glided over the scar on his cheek and it took all of Wills strength not to close his eyes, lest it all disappear.

“I’m as real as you make me out to be. The essence of myself is in the shared rooms of our mind palace. All you need to do is unlock the doors,” he murmured. 

And it’s so honest, so absolute, so forgiving, so _Hannibal,_ that he feels like everything that happened up to this point has been a dream.

Hannibal never seemed like just a regular man, fragile and constricted to human anatomy. He was supposed to re-emerge by his side, baptised into this new life. They were supposed to leave together. Nothing would’ve been able to stop them.

He couldn’t pinpoint the moment when Hannibals face faded out into the reflection of his own in the darkened window.

_We’ve already blurred._

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic and I honestly have no idea where it's going. I'm open to suggestions and to any corrections :)


End file.
